Growing Moss

I'd love to have a moss and fern garden, except I have come to the conclusion in the seven years I have been in my house that shade isn't all that is needed! I need water too and ther IS such a thing as DRY shade! I have found very few ferns that will grow in dry shade. The hosts seem to love it, but moss is totally out of the question! Someday...

Mossandstonegardens.com
Tripplebrookfarm.com

Chickens

Earlier this summer, my neighbors moved and so did their chickens, which I had grown to love as my own as I had fed and cared for them also. Oh how I miss my chickies! I don't have enough space to have chickens, but I hope to someday as their eggs are to die for! I am a member of a backyard chicken group already and the August 2012 issue of Southern Living also talks about backyard chickens. The reading materials it suggests are:

Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens
Storey's Illustrated Guide to Poultry Breeds
Backyardchickens.com
"The Chicken Coop" and "Fresh Eggs Daily" on Facebook
"Coop designs" on Pinterest
Backyard-poultry.meetup.com

Potatoes!

Just harvested my blue potatoes today! I'm not sure I got more than I planted as I planted two large potatoes...

I am really bad at keeping up with this blog this year! Of course, not much to post about since I did not grow much this year. The garlic was dismal this year! I didn't have time this spring to baby it like I normally do and it's been an especially dry summer. Even my lilies did not look that great this year thanks to the drought.

My Dahlia 'Duet' did GREAT this year and all in an itty bitty pot too! I'm pretty sure it has rooted into the soil below. I got a new Dahlia called 'Hawai'i' this year and the first bloom I got looked nothing like what was pictured, however, as it blooms more, the flowers are starting to look more like the picture!

My watermelon hasn't gotten any bigger. It seems they have hit a plateau. One is about softball sized and the other about the size of a baseball. The stem is still green so I am letting them be even though it is September already!

There has not been many stink bugs this year. I thought it was because I did not grow any tomatoes or my feeding the wild birds, but I spoke to Doug Oster at the Phipps Tomato and Garlic Festival and he mentioned the same thing! Go figure that the year I choose not to grow any tomatoes there aren't any stink bugs! Let's hope they don't come back!

This is how the tag looks...

This is what bloomed!

Another bloom....this one looks a bit closer to what the tag looks like!

This one is the most recent bloom. Now we're talking! The blooms are much bigger than I expected. Not a bad problem though!